I recently noticed an observation of a gall. The observer split it open to show the larvae.
I’m pretty sure they’re going to die. (The larvae)
I harvest oak galls and I have always believed that disturbing an unhatched gall was a very bad thing.
what are your thoughts on this?
Is it a big deal or not?
If the species is of conservation importance, it is obviously bad to kill it for an observation unless your reasons and methods are very well thought out (in many places, this would require a scientific collecting permit). If the wasp being sampled is not rare or imperiled, it becomes a more subjective moral question. If I trim a branch off the oak in front of my house, I likely kills hundreds of larvae in the process. If morally you object to killing an individual larva, that is understandable. If someone else’s moral sense says there is no problem killing one insect for an observation, I’d say that is understandable too.
I will photograph a gall, and add another obs for the host plant. Whoever lives in there is still alive.
I don’t object at all to collecting specimens or opening a leaf folded over and tied together with silk by a caterpillar or, as in your case, to splitting open a gall to show the larvae and the gall’s internal structure. My understanding is that there are some galls you can’t ID without seeing the inside (but that isn’t necessary for many galls, by the way). However, I think there had better be a good reason for such collection and, in general, sheer personal curiosity is not a good enough reason in my opinion. If you’re collecting or disturbing specimens for justifiable scientific reasons, that is good enough for me.
Here are my personal limits: I trap moths, but I don’t collect them; the trap has no killing agent and I just let them go after photographing them for iNat. I don’t open up galls or lepidopteran leaf folds, because I am not that serious about them (I do, however, photograph tons of galls for iNat). A little over a year ago, I got quite serious about mosses, liverworts, and hornworts and I was rather shocked to see that in the last quarter-century, there have been only about 450 specimens collected in my state of these plants (there are about 500 species in total here, for comparison). So, I got landowner permission from four big conservation organizations and have set myself out a five-year plan to collect, properly ID and annotate, and donate to the Farlow Herbarium at Harvard University a selection of bryophytes from each of 200 or more sites, more than 4000 specimens in total, I hope. (And now you know exactly how crazy and obsessive I am.)
Similar discussions over ethics:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/can-moths-feel-pain/54744
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-much-disturbance-is-okay/51773
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ethical-behaviour-when-observing-and-photographing-animals/5368/7
I appreciate the perspectives. The observer did not know what kind it was. Neither do I. I know that oak galls have been incorrectly harvested in several locations. Not for science. For tannins and dye. Removing the galls before they hatch resulted in few to no galls the next years. Endangering them, at least locally. I don’t know if the one in question is endangered or not.
It seems pointless at best, since we don’t even know what it might be ì⁷